


The Latest Theory

by Deannie



Series: Cowboys and Zombies [9]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: 3K Round-up Challenge, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gen, Old West Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 14:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7225567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t see as it makes much difference whether it’s a curse or a conspiracy. Either way, too damn many people are just as dead, and rumor-mongering is putting the ones that ain’t, more on edge.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone with any medical knowledge will tell you this isn't QUITE the way things work.
> 
> Anyone with historical knowledge will tell you that people used to think it WAS.

Chris Larabee sat down to his coffee and looked at the paper Buck Wilmington was reading next to him.  _ TRAIN OF THE UNDEAD DECIMATES TOWN! _ the headline read.

Mary Travis might show herself off to be a serious journalist, but she wasn’t above passing along other writers’ sensationalism by reprinting it.

“They reckon someone got bit and it ran through the whole train between one stop and the next,” Buck said quietly. “When the damn thing broke open they went looking for food and found the town. There are rumors there was another train, too, but the Army shut the whole thing down before anyone found out the real truth.” He sighed and folded the paper away. “Surprised it hasn’t happened before.”

“It probably has,” Chris replied, not wanting to feed Buck’s increasingly suspicious nature, but feeling it needed to be said. “This is just the first one where word got out. At least the damn thing didn’t get any farther east.” He watched Nathan and Josiah walk in, the healer with that notebook of his in his hand. Seemed like he was never without it—unless it got in the way of shooting or healing. “Nathan and his doctor pals better get working on a cure pretty damn quick.”

Nathan pursed his lips in irritation. “Parker’s two patients up in Denver are still hanging on,” he said, as if justifying himself. “Been three months now for Mrs. Meyers, and she’s near back to normal.” He frowned. “Except for the damn cough.”

“So what happens next, then?” Buck wanted to know. “You got survivors. What do you do with them?”

“That’s what they’re working on now,” Josiah assured them. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand that looked like diagrams of something or other. “Cossican’s got another man who’s improving out in San Francisco. Says they maybe found something that’ll help. In his blood.”

Buck shuddered. “His blood? Like something  _ living _ in it?”

Nathan cocked his head. “Sort of.” He gestured to the papers in Josiah’s hand. “They got a real good microscope at the university out there. He can see things in the man’s blood. Looks like there’s some kind of new cell being created in their bodies. Latest theory is maybe that stops the disease from taking them over completely.” He sighed. “It might be a parasite, and the body produces some kind of immunisin to destroy them before they get to be so many that they kill the person and turn them zombie.”

Three months here and Chris still didn’t understand half of what Nathan was talking about. Not that it mattered, ultimately. He was just here to keep a town safe. It was the doctors’ job to save the world.

“Why don’t  _ you _ have one of those microscopes?” Buck asked. Chris was amused, but not too surprised, that Buck was so interested in all of this. He wondered if the man might not have wanted to be some kind of scholar or scientist himself if he hadn’t been born the son of a whore, if he’d gone to school like a normal kid. He might not have the brains Nathan had, but he damn sure had the curiosity for it.

“ _ That _ is what I am looking at creating,” Josiah said, flattening the sheaf of papers out on the table. “We’ll need a few parts we can’t make here, but I think between Nathan and Jurgen and me, we could probably put one together.”

“Couldn’t afford to buy one, even if any of the medical supply companies was still delivering out here. This one won’t be as fancy as the one they got in San Francisco,” Nathan cautioned. “Or as powerful—”

“And it ain’t gonna make a lick of difference if we don’t happen upon a victim who’s actually gonna survive for you,” Buck pointed out quietly. The quarantine house just outside the western gate had been home to four different people since it was finished two months ago. All of them were now dust in the burning pits east of town. They just couldn’t seem to figure out how to get a person through the worst of the sickness.

The cowbell at the eastern gate rang four times and stopped.

“Travelers coming in,” Buck announced unnecessarily. He stood up. “Better see if we got another one for your clinic, Nathan.”

Nathan grumbled under his breath, but joined Chris and Josiah in heading out. Chris surveyed the town as he went, thinking. They should put in gates on the north and south approaches, too. Though that’d mean they’d need more men manning them…  Damn, he was becoming domesticated again. It had felt strange the first time, back in Eagle Bend. Felt even stranger now, in the midst of such unreal circumstances.

The cowbell clanged twice, paused, and clanged again. Chris watched Mary Travis walk out of her newspaper office and head for the gate as well, to screen whatever woman or child that two-and-one bell announced. More men  _ and _ women, Chris thought with a wry smile.

“Mr. Larabee,” Mary greeted him politely. “I heard from Tiny that Nathan’s stallion has studded well.” She smiled. “It appears you’ve succeeded as a rancher without even having left the walls.”

Chris gritted his teeth and smiled. He’d  _ been _ a rancher once. A damned good one.

“Horsebreeding takes a little finesse, Mrs. Travis,” he told her simply. Truth was, they could use a man who was better at this than Chris was. But Tiny was a horseman, not a breeder, and the rest of the town didn’t know the first thing about growing a herd. The only breeders in the community had died defending their ranches from the undead months ago.

“Well, you certainly seem to have the knack for it,” she said. The east gate opened as they approached, and a familiar buckboard, topped by two women, drove through and steered off to the side to accommodate a stagecoach. Mary nodded to him in farewell and hurried toward the buckboard, calling to its drivers. “Nettie! Casey! Hello!”

Chris watched as the trio walked over to the small shack that allowed women and children a measure of privacy as they were screened. Nettie Wells and her niece Casey were tough women, more than capable of keeping their small cattle ranch safe from the likes of the undead. They were wealthy now, in the way that wealth was counted these days. They had their pick of supplies, within reason, at almost any store, in exchange for fresh meat for the town.

Bartering had begun to take back over from money when the epidemic hit—one of the reasons Chris and the rest of them were trying so hard to grow the horse population. They made for good trading, given how badly the species had been hit by this.

These stagecoach horses were hale and hearty, though. Exhausted, too. Coaches made horrible time, normally, and the one stage line that still serviced Four Corners every other week had to drive straight through from Pall, fifty miles away—a trip starting at one dawn and ending the next. They’d rest the horses in Four Corners for a day, sometimes two, then drive on to Craystown. That was thirty miles past Eagle Bend, since Staines had refused to allow the stage to stop there, now. They could only use the strongest horses.

Chris was sort of hoping that Four Corners could supply those strongest horses soon. Would be attractive to the stage company to cut a day or two off the drive by being able to swap horses here and move on quickly.

Sheppard was driving today, and he looked done-in as he climbed down and shook hands with Jerry Dennehy before letting the young undertaker lead him to an inspection stall. Chris reckoned Shep would do his usual: sleep ’til supper, then drink ’til dark.

There was a black family on the stage, a mother, father, and two young boys, nervous and almost shellshocked, though it was hard to say why they would be. Nathan and Josiah greeted them warmly and Chris watched the suspicion and fear fade from the mother’s face, only to reappear when Josiah explained the screening process. The cowbell clanged two-and-one again, signaling another woman-or-child check, and this time Britt Potter jogged over from the mercantile, her skirts hitched up for speed.

“I can’t…  _ get naked _ … in front of somebody!” The quiet, appalled protest drew Chris’s attention away from the family.

A white boy with longish black hair who couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen was looking up at Buck, face flushed in embarrassment. Buck was nearly a foot taller than the kid and the effect was comical.

“Well, that’d be a right shame, boy,” Buck told him with a friendly smile. “Because anyone who don’t get screened gets turned out into the desert to fend for themselves.” He looked the boy up and down skeptically. “Reckon you could hold your own for a little while. At least ‘til dark.”

The child drew himself up to his full height, looking all the smaller for it. “I’ve fought ‘em before, you know?” he said indignantly. “Heck, me and a bunch of others, we took on a whole train full of ‘em!”

The outraged claim got Chris moving toward them instead stuck in the dirt watching.

“You was on the Santa Fe line train?” Buck asked, catching Chris’s eyes as he approached. There hadn’t been any report of survivors.

“I was on a train going the other way,” the boy corrected. “The rails were blocked and we had to fight our way out.”

“How many did you lose?” Chris asked quietly, causing the boy to jump in surprise as he appeared beside him.

The boy looked green. “Too many,” he admitted.

“So’ve we,” Chris replied. “Get on in that stall and have Buck check you out. We don’t want to lose any more.”

The boy nodded, suddenly getting it.

“What’s your name, son?” Buck asked as he walked him to the inspection area.

“JD Dunne,” he replied.

“NATHAN!”

The call from Jerry Dennehy had Chris sprinting, arriving just behind Nathan and Josiah. The three of them peered in the top half of the converted stable door, where Shep and Jerry were both pointing their guns at the father of the young black family. He was sitting in the stall, stark naked with a raw, putrid bite on his leg, tossing his head-full of shoulder-length twists of hair back and forth, the rest of his body all but shaking in denial.

“We picked them up on the road ‘tween Pall and here not three hours ago,” Shep told Chris as Nathan took stock of the situation. “They were running hellbent for leather toward us. Said they’d spent the night in a tree, keeping the monsters down. I couldn’t just leave a family with little kids out there, could I?” He tightened his grip on his gun in agitation. “Jesus, I never even thought one of them’d be bit.”

The father flinched at the word.

“Easy now, calm down,” Nathan said quietly, unlatching the door while making sure Jerry and Shep had clear shots, just in case. “Let me take a look now.”

“I didn’t think it bit me,” the father was saying, his hair now obscuring his face as he stared at the bite on his leg. “I didn’t think… We was running—heard the stage coming—and I got the boys and my Sadie to safety. We shot ‘em all down. One grabbed me there at the end, but I… I didn’t think it bit me.”

Nathan examined the wound and glanced back to Chris and Josiah to give them both a look full of equal parts sorrow and hope. “You got bit here all right, but we’re going to try to help you.”

“You can’t help people been bit!” the man cried out, shoving Nathan to the ground in desperation. Chris was glad to see Nathan had gone in unarmed—the poor man looked ready to suicide right there. “Ain’t nothing you can do! Hell, I’m dead already!”

Nathan jumped up, using his height and strength to stop him. The move also blocked Shep and Jerry’s shots, which Chris was pretty certain was planned. “We sure as hell are going to try, all right?” His voice was soothing, and the man’s panic began to recede. “Now what’s your name?”

“Nicholas,” he said quietly, falling back down to sit on the bench, energy spent. “Nicholas Carpenter.”

“Okay, then, Nicholas,” Nathan replied. “We’re gonna take you to the clinic, okay? Get that wound seen to?”

“Can’t do nothing for me,” Nicholas wept. He looked up at Jerry. “My boys? And Sadie? They okay?”

Chris watched as Josiah strode quickly to the shack and knocked. Mrs. Potter came out and spoke to him a second and he jogged back.

“Your wife and sons are all right, Nicholas,” he assured him. “Just let Nathan take a proper look at you, okay?”

Nicholas nodded like a lost little boy, taking the clothes Nathan held out to him and dressing automatically. He looked to be fading on them right there, like he suddenly couldn’t stay awake and moving. “You keep them away from me, you hear?” he begged, words slurring now. “Don’t let me… You keep them away!”

*****

“What are they going to do with him?” JD finished buttoning his vest and watched as the big black man walked Mr. Carpenter away toward the gate. The man who had sprinted to the stagecoach with a boy in each arm just a few hours ago looked like he couldn’t take another step without help. “They ain’t gonna just turn him out, are they?” He was actually more afraid they were going to shoot him, but he couldn’t say that. And he supposed, after Marleville, he didn’t have much room to talk.

“Don’t you worry about that, Kid,” Wilmington said. He seemed like a friendly enough guy, even if he  _ had _ given JD a hard time with the… the getting all undressed and stuff. “Got a saloon serves a mighty fine steak and eggs, if you’re interested. Reckon you could use something after that marathon dash from Pall, huh?”

JD nodded and began to follow him, but his eyes stayed on the little shack whose door had just opened. Four of the townswomen were surrounding the Carpenter boys and their ma, who was crying steadily. The youngest of the women looked his way—just by chance—her long brown hair in twin braids. She was pretty. In a tomboy sort of way. The stagecoach driver had hailed her when she and the old woman had pulled their buckboard up alongside to enter the town, but JD hadn’t caught her name.

“Now, now, Kid,” Wilmington chided him, cuffing him on the shoulder. “Don’t move so fast, all right?” He grinned at the knot of women and the young one ducked her head with a shy grin. “You got the whole day to go courting Miss Welles before the stage leaves tomorrow.”

JD shook his head. “Oh, no sir, Mr. Wilmington,” he said clearly. “I ain’t getting back on that stage. After Marleville I told myself I was gonna find a safe place to hole up and just stay there.”

Wilmington chuckled as he steered JD down the street. “Well now, Marleville is a hell of a jaunt from Four Corners, kid,” he said lightly. “What made you pick here?”

JD didn’t actually know the answer to that one, himself. “The army dropped us off at Pall—we were in a convoy til then. The town was full to bursting and there wasn’t any place for me… I just hopped the first stage.”

“Weren’t you headed in the wrong direction?” Wilmington asked pleasantly. “Figured you’d want to head back East damn near faster than you could run, wouldn’t you?”

“Going east costs a lot more than going west these days. Don’t have much money,” JD admitted quietly. “And… There ain’t nothing for me there anyway.” It was almost good Ma hadn’t lived to see this.

“Might not be anything for you here, either,” Wilmington told him seriously. He clapped him on the back as they walked in the doors of the dark and mostly empty saloon. “But you can stay a while if you’re game to find out.”

JD nodded, taking a seat at the table where Wilmington plopped himself down like a hound dog, smoothing out a newspaper that was already sitting there. JD was surprised to see the headline and his mouth went dry. He hadn’t read a single paper since the army picked them up. He’d mostly tried to put all that from his mind...

“You hungry, son?” Wilmington asked. 

JD jerked his eyes away from the paper and glared in irritation. “All respect, Mr. Wilmington,” he said quietly. “My name is JD.”

“And I ain’t Mr. Wilmington,” his companion replied good-naturedly. “Name’s Buck. And I still want to know if I’m ordering breakfast for one or two.”

JD took a deep breath and returned the man’s open smile, feeling something other than dull horror or stale fear for the first time since that train had rolled to a stop in the night. “Two. I reckon.”

Buck’s grin grew. “Two it is.” He gestured to the barkeep, who nodded and headed into the back room. “So, what really happened with that train?” 

He asked it all innocently, and JD looked at the headine again and sighed. “I guess pretty much like they said, probably. We were stopped on the tracks by the crash ahead of us and we… just did what we had to do.”

Buck nodded. “Holed up and picked them off until help came.”

JD nodded, gazing at the story in newsprint before him without reading the words.

“Sounds like a hell of a time,” Buck offered. “Except that they don’t mention any of that in the papers. Not even a second train.”

What? JD’s eyes flashed up to meet Buck’s suspicious gaze. “You think I’m lying?” he grated.

“Somebody is." Buck’s blond and kind of scary friend from the town gate spoke quietly from behind him, causing him to jump again. Lord, the man had spurs on his boots—how’d he move so silent!? “But I figure you’d have to be stupid to pick a crash that’s all over the papers as your story unless it was true.”

JD straightened up. “Well it is, mister,” he averred. “We had a couple of army men from Fort Stockton on the train to Santa Fe. When we were stopped by the derailment, they gathered up a bunch of us to try to save the engineer and a few railway police who were checking out the wreck.” Two plates of food were dropped on the table right then, but he suddenly wasn't very hungry. “We were too late for them. But then we did like you said—we holed up in the train until a bunch of troops showed up to rescue us.”

Both men were silent for a long time, and JD couldn’t quite figure them out. Buck seemed to be thinking on something awfully hard, and his friend seemed to be waiting for it—but not like he’d want to hear it. 

“You say your men were from Stockton?” Buck asked finally.

JD nodded. “I don’t know where the army troop that rescued us was from, but when they showed up, Captain Michaels told them he was an infantryman out of Fort Stockton.”

“What’re you thinking, Buck?” his friend asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Buck replied. “Just seems like a hell of a coincidence that a soldier out of Stockton had a part in that crash. San Diego’s where this all started, after all.”

“If you believe the rumors,” the other man replied skeptically. “And it doesn’t sound like he had a part in it. The crash was already there when your train stopped, right kid?”

JD nodded.

“The army sure tied this one up pretty tight, though,” Buck said, as if he was catching on to something. JD sat up straight again, suddenly remembering what Michaels had said about the wreck and how the army would come looking for it. 

“Michaels knew that train was coming,” he told them both with certainty. “He said the army wouldn’t write it off. ‘Not  _ this _ train,’ he said, like it was special.” He saw anger and worry and disgust on Buck’s face, resigned irritation on his friend’s. “You ain’t saying they knew those monsters were on the train?”

“Just saying maybe the army knows more than they’re telling, kid,” Buck grumbled.

“Sort of their job, Buck,” Buck’s friend reminded him, like that closed the whole discussion and he was sick of it, anyway. He smiled more welcomingly. “We haven’t been properly introduced. Name’s Chris Larabee.”

JD froze in the act of shaking his hand. “ _ The _ Chris Larabee!? The famous gunslinger? I read once where you took down ten men in Yuma—shot ‘em all down before a one of them could make off with the bank’s money.”

“Yeah, sure as hell weren’t nobody there watching your damn back, was there, Chris?” Buck groused, but in good fun, like he’d heard the story too darn many times and no one ever got it right.

Larabee smiled, but it was bitter and old. “Ain’t much need for worrying about bank robberies anymore, is there?” he asked. “I figure you could call me retired on account of the End of Days.”

“He’s a damn fine horse breeder, though,” Buck put in jokingly. “So we keep him around. We’re like to be overrun by foals come this time next year.”

JD looked at Chris in confusion and the older man explained. “Been working on getting the stallions to stud. Horses make good bartering these days.”

“I’m real good with horses,” JD offered. This could be his way in! He didn’t figure a tight little town like this’d let him stay just because he wanted to. But if he had a skill to pay his way... “And I can shoot.”

Buck clapped him on the shoulder. “Hell, kid, you might just fit in here, after all. Why don’t you eat up and I’ll show you the place?”

The plate of eggs and steak looked a whole lot more inviting now, and JD dug in, feeling almost safe for the first time in too dang long.

********

“How’s he doing, Nathan?” 

Nathan looked up to see Josiah standing in the doorway of the quarantine building. The sun was almost down, and Nathan knew he should be locking the place up against the zombies, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to give up on the day. On freedom. He snorted hopelessly and turned back to his medicines and his books. That stubbornness had gotten him north to safety years ago, but escaping slavery and escaping extinction appeared to be two different things.

“Can’t even tell he’s sick right now,” he admitted. “If I hadn’t seen the bite with my own eyes, I’d say he’s in fine health, just exhausted from the fight. Ain’t seen no one sleep like that before, though. Barely moving and he’s breathing real slow…” He shrugged despondently. “I figure the cough and fever to start any time now.”

He didn’t turn around, but heard Josiah take a seat at the table. A table covered with papers and books and knowledge Nathan just couldn’t seem to make use of. “His wife and sons want to see him,” the old man told him.

“He won’t let me send for them,” Nathan replied sadly. “I talked to him, tried to tell him that we’d make sure they was protected…” He sighed and stared through the bottles and jars and bags in front of him. None of this medicine had cured a damn person yet. “Hell, I ain’t sure I’d let them in if I was him.”

“He may not have a chance later, Nathan,” Josiah replied. 

Nathan whirled around to face him. “Don’t you think I know that, Josiah!?” he barked. “There’s nothing I can do for him except wait til he gets sick. Try to help him once he does.” He turned back to his cabinets and resisted the urge to throw a bottle of ipecac across the room. “Hell, I can’t even do nothing for him then, can I?”

“There  _ are _ survivors, Nathan—”

“They got doctors looking after them,” Nathan grated, his own worthlessness thick in his throat as he pushed the words out. “Not some pathetic excuse of an ex-slave.”

“Only thing that’s pathetic here is your self pity.” Josiah stood, rising into the frozen silence his growled words had spawned. “You’ve managed to save a whole damn town from itself. Saved me, too.” He strode across the room to place a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “You’re a free man now, my friend,” he murmured comfortingly. “Cast off the shackles of what you used to be. They can only get in the way.”

Nathan took a deep breath. Josiah was right. He knew it. “Sometimes it just seems like I ain’t up to this, Josiah,” he whispered. 

“I’m not sure any of us are,” Josiah confided. “But God doesn’t ask—”

“—More than we can give, I know.”

“Oh hell, Nathan, God asks more than we can give every day!” Josiah’s chuckle was infectious, and Nathan felt something uncoil in his chest as he joined in. “I was going to say that God doesn’t ask the impossible unless he’s willing to lend a hand.” He looked pointedly at the guardhouse they could clearly see out the window. At Buck Wilmington standing guard, with the kid from the stage seeming to hang on his every word. “Serendipity ain’t just happenstance. Sometimes it’s the push of God’s hand to the right people.”

A harsh cough sounded from the room upstairs, and Nathan’s mood plunged as it was followed by a longer, more torturous bout.  _ The beginning of the end, probably, _ he thought morosely. He started gathering his things, holding out a pipe stuffed with dried leaves for inspection. “Menewa—the medicine man at the Seminole village—gave me a plant they use there to quiet coughs,” he said, knowing his voice sounded dull and hopeless. “It ain’t the same one the Navajo used out by Potash Spring or the one I used on the others, but… reckon maybe now’s the time to try it out.”

“Do what you can, Nathan,” Josiah told him seriously. 

“Ain’t nothing else to do.”

Nathan trudged up the stairs toward his patient, gratified by the sounds of a meal being made in the kitchen he’d just left. It wasn’t the first time Josiah had spent the night in this house, quiet and unobtrusive while Nathan fought a disease that never seemed to lose.

He might be tilting at windmills here, but at least he wasn’t doing it alone.

********

Chris was nearly asleep that night when Buck raised the alarm at the western gate. Giving thanks for the full moon, Larabee grabbed his yellow boy and ammo and ran for the wall, clambering up a ladder to the walkway they’d put in at the top of the wooden barrier. Wasn’t long before there were half a dozen people crouched with him, picking off the undead as quick as they could in the uncertain light. 

“Fifteen in all— _ dang! _ ” 

He smirked at JD Dunne’s excited outburst. Two of the undead started for the quarantine house like its white walls were a beacon, and Chris took one down, watching the second one fall as well. The muzzle flare in the upstairs window of the building outside the walls was followed by others as Nathan, or maybe Josiah, went to work.

“There’s more coming from the north!” Casey Welles’s voice rang out from somewhere along the line. “Six or seven, I think.”

Chris hoped Casey wasn’t close enough to the guardhouse to hear Dunne’s response: “A girl ain’t supposed to be here, is she?”

Buck chuckled in the night. “That  _ girl _ and her old auntie have held their cattle ranch through more than one  _ no muertos _ attack, boy,” he schooled him. “Reckon she can handle shooting fish in a barrel with the rest of us.”

And fish in a barrel they were. Didn’t take them long to pick off the last ones, leaving a bunch of dead undead outside the gate. Damn things were persistent. Nathan thought maybe they zeroed in on heat—living bodies. Josiah still thought they were just plain evil, but he’d given up the idea that they were demons. Chris figured that might be progress.

Whatever the answer, they kept coming. Sometimes Chris wondered how many people were left in the territory, so damn many of these creatures seemed to be on the prowl. They’d burned twenty of them this month already, plus this lot. Didn’t seem like much, but if even half the towns around them were holding their own, wouldn’t they just eventually run out of dead people?

“Somebody game to go out and see if Nathan and Josiah are all right?” Buck called down the line.

“No need,” Jake Jensen replied from further along. They all saw the metered flashing of the candle in the quarantine’s window, but the young telegraph operator translated the morse code. “‘Fine here. Go back to sleep.’”

Buck chuckled. “Short and sweet. You heard the man, lady and gents—back to your beds. Clean up duty in the morning.”

Jake used one of the lanterns to flash something back to the quarantine, and everyone else began mobilizing and heading down the ladders, grumbling  good naturedly. “They’ll smell even worse come morning,” Potter muttered, but he’d be there with the rest of them, cleaning up the mess.

Whose mess, though? Chris wondered idly, as he nodded to Buck and headed back to his room. The damn plague started somewhere, somehow. Nathan and his friends didn’t even know whether or not it was something more than just a random occurrence, more than Mother Nature getting pissed at the world, as Buck would say. It wasn’t divine retribution. So what was it?

Buck’d latched onto the army theory, which made sense, given that he hadn’t ever really trusted the government even when they were fighting for the army themselves. Jake Jensen was damn sure it was the Mexicans, trying to wipe out all the gringos so they could have back their lands. A number of people blamed the Chinese—more because they were a convenient target, Chris thought, than because they had anything to do with it. And there were still people who swore by the Indian curse...

Hell, it wasn’t any of his business, was it? He flopped back down on his bed and tried to relax into sleep again. Didn’t matter who started it—if anybody started it at all—it needed ending, right?

Maybe Carpenter, out there in the quarantine house, maybe he’d be the one that gave Nathan and his doctor friends their clues… If he lived.

“Hell,” he whispered to himself, closing his eyes. “If any of us do.”

*********

Three weeks later, Buck watched JD Dunne play out the lead on a pretty little filly, smiling as the young horse tossed her head and balked at the training. The bulk of the herd had just been turned out to the day pasture and the ring was free of any other horses. Kid was good with them, that was for sure. 

Buck had laughed when Chris woke up from a 20-hour sleep his first day here, took one look at the horse paddock, and proclaimed it useless. That thrilled old Tiny, who Nathan said had been complaining about the place since the fifth of forever. The eastern guard house wasn’t far from the cramped field, so they punched through the adobe wall ( _ that _ caused no end of grumbling from the folks in town who griped that they’d just put the damn thing up) and added a gate that lead from the shelter of the city to a large fenced-in field that looked damn near like a regular pasture—except for the armed guard watching over the herd from the watchtower. 

The horses were let out for the day and stabled at night. Kept them all a damn sight happier, and happy horses were more likely to get themselves in the family way than unhappy ones. They had six mares pregnant now, and an even dozen who’d be going back into heat here shortly. Lady hadn’t cottoned to Washington’s advances last month, but that might mean she was already in the family way and they just couldn’t tell it yet. Chris had told him yesterday that he was figuring to see how the new kid did when the mares went into heat again, seeing how good he was at training them.

Buck was maybe the only one not surprised that the notorious Chris Larabee was a damn fine horse breeder, but he’d seen it first-hand before Chris had made a name for himself with grief-fueled anger and a gun. Buck had ridden a little out of his way on the road to Tuckerville a couple of weeks ago and checked on Chris’s old place outside of Eagle Bend. The house was still burned to the ground, Sarah and Adam were still dead, their graves undisturbed… It had been a good ranch. Would’ve been a thriving one if they had lived—a place to pass on to Adam and his wife and kids.

“Belle, stop tossing your head!” JD called irritably, as the filly yanked on her bit and the lead attached to it. “You ain’t getting a single one of those carrots that you  _ know _ I got on me, if you don’t behave.”

Buck chuckled.

“He wasn’t lying,” Chris said, sidling up to lean on the fence with him and watch the training in the early morning. “Been here just a few weeks and he’s already tamed a couple of the wilder ones. Kid knows what he’s doing.”

“With the horses anyway,” Buck replied with a grin, nodding to young Casey Welles, who had just rode back into town half an hour ago and now stood by the barn door, trying not to look like she was watching JD’s every move. “Seems he’s hopeless with the womenfolk.”

Chris smiled. “Reckon maybe you could teach him a thing or two there?” he asked teasingly.

Buck snorted, but inwardly, he marveled all over again at how Chris was almost happy here. He was still the brooding presence no one ever seemed willing to cross, but the crushing guilt of Sarah and Adam’s deaths, the crazy anger and self destruction he’d seemed hellbent on when they parted ways in Texas? They were gone, replaced by something that wasn’t really hope, but was far enough from despair to do, at least for now. Sarah and Adam were a wound that would never close, but Four Corners, or maybe the damn  _ no muertos _ , had given him a purpose again. Something he sorely needed.

“Josiah’s heading out to Pall,” Chris said, nodding his approval as JD tugged gently on the lead and Belle stopped for him, neat as you please. “Figure I’ll go with him.”

“Finally gonna get those lenses he’s missing for their fancy microscope?” Buck asked. Thing was the bane of Josiah’s existence. He couldn’t seem to get it right. “You ask me, he should just take up a collection and buy one of those things already made.”

“Who’s he gonna get the money from?” Chris asked with faint disgust. “Wheeler over at the hotel? Maybe Conklin—reckon he’s still mad we busted a hole through the wall right behind his place.”

“They do seem to make a real fuss for men who ain’t raised a hand to help, don’t they?” Buck agreed. “You two ride safe, okay?” He looked back toward the other end of town. “How’s he doing?”

“Carpenter?” Chris asked, following Buck’s gaze. He shrugged, seeming surprised. “Nathan thinks he might actually be through the worst of it.”

Buck whistled low. “Faster than that lady up in Denver,” he said. Mrs. Meyers was still alive, going on almost four months. The doctor had even moved her family into the empty house next to his, so she could be with them and he could still keep an eye on her. Hell, maybe there was hope for the world yet.

“Nathan reckons maybe it’s ‘cause he’s younger,” Chris told him. “Stronger, probably.” 

“Guess you all better get that microscope up and running then, hadn’t you?” Buck commanded, his smile taking the sting out. “I’m looking forward to seeing whatever those things are that live in your blood when you’re bit.”

“Long as you don’t get bit yourself,” Chris told him sternly. 

“Hey, I’ll be safe behind walls,” Buck reminded him testily. “You’re the one we got to worry about.” He looked Chris up and down, trying desperately to lighten the mood.  _ His  _ mood, anyway. God, he hated it when any of them left town—he was getting downright  _ pathological, _ as Josiah would say. “Though I reckon you’re still too damn thick to tempt them.” He raised his voice as JD came closer. Belle was beside the young man, wearing a proper halter now, and far more docile as she munched loudly on a carrot. “JD here says they eat your brains.”

“Well, hell, Buck, guess they’d starve if they ever came across you,” JD said, just the right touch of rude in his tone.

Buck nearly hit Chris as his old friend laughed into the shocked silence, but the teasing calmed his own soul some. Seemed JD was good for more than just the horses.

“Keep him in line, kid,” Chris said to JD, giving Buck a look that let him know Chris knew exactly what was going on in his head. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

“I meant what I said, Chris,” Buck told him seriously, trying not to worry. “You two ride safe. I expect to see you back soon.”

Chris nodded, clasping his friend’s hand. “We’ll send a wire when we get there,” he promised.

He headed for the eastern gate, and Buck knew he was probably looking forward to getting outside the walls and stretching his legs some. Chris was just plain stronger than Buck was, he guessed. 

“Enjoy yourself, you old war dog,” he whispered with a grin. “Undead be damned.”

*******

“Cough is better today,” Nathan said approvingly, listening to Nicholas breathe for him. He looked at the man’s face a minute and put a hand to his forehead. “Fever’s down, too.”

“Still damn tired,” Nicholas slurred. He was awake a lot of the time now, but he wasn’t strong enough to leave his bed for long, and had to be helped when he did. Hell, poor man hadn’t even been able to eat more than broth until a few days ago. Nathan wrote down his notes on today’s exam. He’d been taking notes furiously ever since Nicholas Carpenter rode in on that stage, in fact. 

Nicholas was a different kind of sick man than the ones that had died in this house in the past, maybe a variation on the disease. Nicholas fell into a kind of deep sleep for the first day and more, coughing even then. He went crazy like the rest for another five or six after that. Tying him down and keeping him full up with sleeping draughts when Nathan could pour them down his throat seemed to work there, just like it had for Dr. Parker up in Denver. A lot of people were probably killed during that phase, to protect those around them, and Nathan wondered how many people would’ve been strong enough to fight off the disease if they’d been given a chance. After that it had all been wracking coughs and wasting until the last four or five days when he’d finally started to come back from it.

“We’ll get some proper food into you soon,” Nathan promised him, moving on to throw the covers off of the man’s legs to check the bite. “Feed you back up.”

Nicholas had a kind of pole-axed look about him. “Didn’t rightly think I’d be eating anything again,” he murmured quietly. “Can’t quite believe I’m here, truth be told.”

Nathan grinned in satisfaction. “You ain’t the first to survive it, Nicholas,” he told him. “God willing, you won’t be the last.” His grin turned to a frown as he unwound the bandage on the zombie bite. “Damn thing never seems to get any better,” he muttered. “Mrs. Myers’s is the same way.”

“Ain’t getting worse though, right?” Nicholas asked anxiously.

The bite was red and thick and violent, healed as it was going to be, it looked like. “It ain’t no worse.” He shrugged and left it open to the air. “Might just be like a smallpox scar, you know? There forever.”

“However short my forever is gonna be.” The room was silent for a long moment before Nicholas spoke again, quiet and careful. “Sadie and my boys… you think maybe…?”

Sadie Carpenter was helping out at the gardens, showing herself to have a hell of a green thumb. Eugene and Horace, Nicholas’s sons, were both taking lessons from Mrs. Travis and learning their letters, spending their free time watching the horses and learning to ride. The family was making a life for themselves. God willing, their father could join them in it soon.

“ _ They _ been waiting on  _ you _ , Nicholas, not the other way around,” Nathan told him. He smiled gently. “Reckon maybe they could come on out for supper, if you’re ready for that? Think you could sit up at the table for a spell? I’ll have Mr. Yardley over at the hotel make you something real mild.”

The fear in Nicholas’s eyes was overwhelming, but the longing still won out. “Think I’d like that, Nathan,” he whispered, dropping his gaze to the ground. “Thank you. For everything.”

Nathan picked up his tray and his notebook and nodded to his patient, his heart lighter than it had been in a long time. “You’re welcome. I’ll go talk to Sadie, see if we can’t round up those boys of yours.”

“You’ll be here?” Nicholas asked, the fear back in spades. “With your gun. Just in case?”

Nathan put a hand on the grip of the firearm he never took off when he was doctoring here. “I promised we’d keep them safe,” he reminded the man. “I aim to keep that promise.”

He walked out of the room and closed the door, praying he wouldn’t have to use the gun that sat so heavy at his hip.

There was a knock at the door, and he jumped in surprise. Out here beyond the wall, weren’t many who’d come calling. Nathan hurried down the stairs and opened the door to see Mary Travis standing there, carrying a folded piece of paper. 

“Ms. Travis,” he greeted her, surprise in his voice. He looked out to the watch tower and saw Tiny watching them carefully—making sure Mary got there safely, no doubt. Nathan waved to him and shut the door behind him. “What are you doing out here?”

She smiled bravely. “Tiny assured me he’d see to my safe passage, Nathan, don’t worry.” She straightened up, all business. “With Josiah in Pall, I assumed you wouldn’t be coming into town today, and there was something I wanted to discuss with you.”

“Well sure,” he said, a queer feeling in his stomach. He led her to the kitchen and offered her a chair. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ve been talking with a few reporters and newspaper owners in other towns, and you’re not the only one to try nursing people through this.” She handed him the paper. “A few of us thought this might help the cause.”

Nathan looked at the pamphlet in his hands. The front was printed in neat letters, no illustration or nothing, just a few simple lines.

> **THEY CAN SURVIVE!**
> 
> The epidemic sweeping our territory is frightening, but the consequences of being attacked by the sorely afflicted don’t need to be fatal. Survivors are few, but they are out there! With diligence and care, we can improve the odds of recovery. Learn to protect yourself and your loved ones, and read here how to treat those who are attacked before they succumb.
> 
> **FIGHT THE CONTAGION!**

“You know there ain’t actually been a true survivor yet, right?” he said, though the idea that he had one upstairs made him giddy if he thought on it. “I mean, a few of ‘em are getting better, but… We don’t know what’s going happen here, long-term.” He sighed, taking a seat across the table from her. “And we only got a handful—most of ‘em die anyway, no matter what we do.”

“We have to give people hope, Nathan,” she told him staunchly. “The more people who try to fight this the better, and they won’t do that if they don’t have a reason to.”

Nathan nodded in agreement and opened the pamphlet, skimming through to see that Mary Travis had been paying a great deal of attention. The pamphlet suggested citizens refrain from drinking waters fouled by the afflicted, that they restrain those bitten and try to control the fever and reduce the cough if possible, that they check for hidden bites that might have happened fighting off an attack…

“This is nice, Mary,” he said finally. It couldn’t hurt, at any road. “Real fine piece.”

Mary preened just that little bit. “A few of us have been writing back and forth, trying to get just the right tone.” She watched him carefully. “Would you add anything?”

Not to this. The one thing he’d add would be to tell the readers to shoot their patients and friends and loved ones in the head should the disease go too far. That wasn’t a truth Mary and her newspaper friends would think worth printing.

“It’s good as it is,” he told her. “You all gonna print ‘em up and pass ‘em out to all the towns?”

Mary smiled in relief at his approval. “I spoke with Mr. Shepard the last time he rode through. He said he’d distribute it along the stage route. The other journalists will do the same in their areas.” She stood, done with her business, and looked to the doorway that led to the stairs. “How is Mr. Carpenter?” she asked carefully.

Nathan couldn’t hide a smile suddenly, small though it was. Maybe Mary and her friends and their optimism weren’t totally misplaced. “He’s doing better, thank you for asking. Matter of fact,” he began, reaching for a piece of paper and his pen and ink. “Could you do me a favor and deliver a couple of messages for me?” His smile grew. “I think it’s time Mrs. Carpenter came out for a visit.”

*********

It had been a few months since Josiah had come east, and Pall, New Mexico was still a fair sized place. He was glad to see that they’d taken at least a few good precautions in his absence. The main clump of buildings was now rung around by a solid adobe edifice, with larger haciendas and, farther out, a number of good sized ranches, surrounding it like villages around a medieval city. Josiah and Chris were allowed in a little too easily, making Josiah worry for the future of the place, but being just at the eastern edge of the chaos, maybe they hadn’t had as much to fear from the random stranger stumbling in, bit and turning.

He figured that’d change soon.

The trip from city to city could be made in one long trek, from pre-dawn to well past dusk, but Josiah had invited Chris along for a reason. With two people, you could make the trip a little easier on old bones like his. They had left Four Corners at a reasonable time yesterday morning, and spent a few hours around nightfall last night, trading naps about halfway between the two towns. They’d kept the camp a dark one, to make any approaching undead easier to see, but luckily, there hadn’t been a one of them to disturb the stopover. Still, Josiah was exhausted as they rode up to the stables well after dawn. Sleeping beneath the open sky didn’t hold the allure it once had, and guard duty was nerve-wracking, even when you had a long view of flat land in every direction.

“I’ll stop by the boarding house and get us a room,” Chris said, obviously feeling the long ride as much as Josiah was. “Want to have a talk with the new sheriff while you hunt up your jeweler.” He handed his gelding off to the stable boys. “Shep tells me the young man has ideas.” 

There were a good number of fine looking horses in the paddock behind the barn, and Josiah wondered, watching his friend look them over, if Chris might not end up ponying a new horse or two back with him. Pall’s new sheriff wasn’t the only one with ideas for preserving what was left of civilization out here.

“Meet you at the Falling Horse in a couple of hours, then,” Josiah agreed. “And you might want to suggest to that sheriff that not everyone walking through the gate gets bit in a place you can see it.”

Chris snorted his agreement as he walked off, and Josiah headed up toward the mercantile and the small jeweler’s shop that occupied the business’s back room.

Mr. Schultz had made the lenses just exactly as Josiah had requested in his telegram, and he gladly forked over the money for them, packing them carefully in his satchel so they wouldn’t break on the way home. He and Jurgen had tried any number of times to grind just the right thickness and shape of glass, but while Josiah was a fair craftsman, and Jurgen a talented metalworker, lampsmen and jewelers they were not. Luckily, Schultz was more than happy to spend an hour or so detailing just the right way to prepare and shape the lenses to get the correct magnification. Josiah left with a sheaf of papers detailing all he and Jurgen would need to make more, should these ones be damaged—though Schultz made sure to warn him that the quality wouldn’t be as good as his own.

Josiah headed for the telegraph office next, knowing that at the very least Buck would be worried and Nathan would be wondering about the lenses. It was nearly noon, and they’d be wondering why they hadn’t heard from him. His telegram was short and sweet: SAFE IN PALL. LENSES FINE. HOME SOON. Seven nickels to hang their hope on.

The microscope was more than just a tool, after all. It was a symbol of Man’s desire to succeed. To survive as a species. Whether Nicholas Carpenter lived or not, Josiah knew that Nathan would never stop fighting to save everyone he could. He couldn’t do anything less than help the man try.

The Falling Horse was hardly a high class establishment, but it served drinks that were more whiskey than water and offered a few meals that wouldn’t turn your stomach. Much. And the proprietess was a stunning woman of his own age by the name of Lurlene. For her, he’d eat damn near anything.

“Josiah Sanchez, I haven’t seen you in far too long.” Lurlene sauntered up as he settled himself at one of the tables near the back, the blue velvet of her dress overlaid with frilly lace that swayed tantalizingly when she moved her hips. “I’ve missed you, preacher,” she said, leaning down to give him a light peck on the cheek and a fine view of her bosom. She sat next to him, gesturing for the barkeep to send something over before focusing all her attention on him. “Tell me the news from Four Corners.”

Josiah smiled wryly. “Not much to tell, Lurlene,” he said quietly. “We’re still there. Ain’t been wiped off the face of the map quite yet.” He reached for the beers that were delivered to their table, handing her her mug. “Britt Potter said to send her regards if I saw you.” 

Lurlene smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “I’d’ve been hurt if you  _ didn’t  _ come see me, honey. You know that.”

“Well if we was all gone, the damn Mexicans’d get their land back, wouldn’t they?” someone proclaimed from a nearby table.

“Mexicans is too stupid to do something like this,” another man replied. “I heard the governor over in California? He’s got him a doctor there that promised he’d give him the power to live forever.”

The other man laughed. “Governor was shot in the head last month when he went feral,” he pointed out. “Didn’t work out so damn well for him, did it?” He took another swig of beer. “I’m telling you, Juarez and his crazy Aztec doctors. It’s all on them.”

“You’re both idiots. Just… idiots,” a drunk-off-his-ass man told them both. “It’s the government. The  _ United States _ government. They MADE the damn things.” Josiah looked over and saw the young man wave his hand negligently, his voice dropping once more. “Or keep ‘em. As pets.”

“Why don’t you all just drink your drinks and keep your traps shut?” Lurlene called out, annoyance thick in her voice. “I’m sick of having more rumors being thrown about in my place. There’s damn sure enough of them already.” She sighed at Josiah’s curious look. “The latest theory on the walking dead,” she told him, derision thick in her tone as she gestured at the drunk man. “The president’s to blame—it’s all some big plot to clear out the western territories. Sprung up right about the time that train crashed. You don’t hear it in the papers and such, but the Army came into town here with a bunch of survivors, about a week after. The way I see it, the army saved those people and the army’s the government, right?”

Josiah nodded. They’d sure as hell saved JD. “I expect people need someone to blame,” he offered. He had a good view of the doors and watched Chris walk in and scan the place, homing in on him and heading over. “Maybe the president makes a better story than a love-sick Indian maid.”

Lurlene shook her head. “Don’t see as it makes much difference whether it’s a curse or a conspiracy. Either way, too damn many people are just as dead, and rumor-mongering is putting the ones that ain’t more on edge.” She took a deep breath, looked up, and smiled as Chris arrived at the table. “I’ll leave you two boys to talk.” And with that, she rose, sashaying away.

“Reckon she wouldn’t like what anyone had to say on the matter,” Chris murmured, taking Lurlene’s untouched mug when Josiah handed it to him, and sipping at the bitter drink. “Damn shame she hasn’t found a way to make people shut up yet.”

Josiah chuckled. Chaos bred chaos. After JD Dunne came into town with his news of that crash, Josiah and Buck had discussed the possibility of the army being, if not involved in the disease itself, at least involved in some sort of cover up about why it happened. Like all the men at that table nearby with their own theories, Buck seemed pretty sure of his. 

“You agree with Buck that there’s some sort of conspiracy going on here?” 

Chris snorted, but he looked around casually. “Doesn’t matter what I think. They’re still out there, ain’t they?” He gestured to Josiah’s bag. “You get what you needed?” he asked, changing the topic awful quickly. Chris had no patience at all for rumors  _ or _ conspiracies.

“And more,” Josiah said blithely. “Reckon we can leave at first light. Long damn ride home, huh?”

Chris sniffed at the length of the trip. “Got a few ideas from the new sheriff to mull over on the way.” That sounded interesting... “I’m going to eat something and go see whether that palomino mare might not be for sale.”

“Didn’t think we’d be going home alone,” Josiah replied with a laugh. He could wait to find out what was going on in Larabee’s brain. Hell, all he seemed to do these days  _ was _ wait.

Chris grinned without shame. “What’s that Buck’s always saying? A stallion’s got to have a little variety?”

**********

After lunch, JD went up to do his turn standing guard at the western tower. Casey Welles was keeping him company. She was doing it a lot lately, and that was okay. 

“I just wish there was a way to talk to everybody, without riding all the way into town, you know?” she asked, looking east toward the Welles homestead. 

Casey was leaving before supper, back to her Aunt Nettie’s place. She’d had to stay in town last night to get their yoke repaired, but she didn’t like leaving the old woman alone for even that long, and this wasn’t the first time she’d wished aloud for some way to get help fast if they needed it. The dead weren’t likely to wait for one or the other of them to ride out for reinforcements.

JD had been thinking hard about that since the last time she’d come into town. He thought about her a lot, actually, and… It would be nice if he could… Well, it would be good if  _ somebody _ could contact them—not just  _ them _ , but the other ranchers, too. Even that old man Guy Royal, though he and his men hadn’t been into town in so long some people were hoping he’d been eaten. Didn’t sound like a nice man and JD was glad he hadn’t met him yet.

“What about a telegraph line?” he asked, looking hard at a dot far off in the foothills, seeing if it was maybe getting closer.

“You can’t just string a telegraph line through the prairie, JD,” she replied, mocking him. 

“Sure you can,” he said, still watching the dot as it grew and grew. “Heck, lots of the mansions and big factories in Boston had telegraph lines. Most of them ran the lines on the buildings over to the nearest relay station, but some ran the lines on poles like they got along the railways out here. Some even ran them underground.”

“Huh,” Casey said quietly. “That’s a real good idea, JD,” she praised. Her voice went… something. Conniving or teasing or something. “Maybe I’ll go over and ask  _ Jake _ if he could do that.”

The dot was a horse now, and JD wished he had a spyglass. Maybe Josiah could make him one, like he was making that microscope.

Casey huffed angrily and smacked him on the arm. He looked away from the dot, confused by her sudden snit. 

“I suppose I ought to pack up then,” she said meanly, stomping away down the ladder. She was steps down the street when she turned back, mad. “At least Jake pays attention when I talk!”

What had he done this time? “I pay attention!” he called to her. He did. He just also paid attention to his job.

Wait, had she said she was gonna go talk to  _ Jake Jensen _ ? 

“Looks like you might’ve messed up again, kid,” Buck called to him from the ground below the guard tower. “Never pay more attention to  _ anything _ than a woman.”

“Shut up, Buck,” JD growled. He’d have to make sure Jake didn’t take advantage of her. The guy was almost thirty, for goodness sake! He looked back at the approaching horse for a long moment, ignoring Buck’s laughter, before he rang the bell five times: Mail coming in. 

The rider wore no hat and didn’t look familiar from this distance, but he wore the colors and carried the bag of the US Postal Service.  As he got closer, JD could tell he was damn tired, slumped over his mount and barely holding…

“Dang it,” JD whispered as the man got close enough to really see. He rang the bell three times, paused, then two more: Dead man riding.

“I got him, JD,” Buck called up to him quietly, all teasing gone from his tone as he hefted his rifle and sighted the rider through one of the ground-level gun slits. JD hoped he was wrong—hoped the guy had just been riding for too long. He swallowed hard as Buck cursed under his breath and fired, striking the man in the head and knocking him off his horse. Buck wouldn’t shoot a living person. JD was pretty sure, from the stories Buck told, that he’d never be able to bring himself to do it again.

But he could spot a zombie an awful long way off. 

“I better head out and check his horse,” Buck said quietly, rifle still in hand. “And I expect the mail should come in.”

Yeah. Because life went on, right? Even when everyone was dying around you. JD watched the whole thing play out and suddenly, whether Casey gave Jake Jensen the time of day just didn’t seem that important. 

Buck walked out the gate as JD and a few people on the ground kept their rifles trained on him or on the horse that stood still, breathing harder than the walking pace should have had it doing. Buck petted the mount lightly a moment and then shot it as calmly as he’d shot its owner, but no before cutting the saddlebags and postal sack loose of it. He turned right around and headed back, leaving the corpses there in the sun.

Eventually they’d all end up like that. Someone whose stuff—mail or gun or can of food—was more important than his body...

“Keep your eyes open, JD,” Buck called up to him as he loped back to the gate. “Looks like the horse ain’t been bit long. Reckon the rider was attacked somewhere close.” He nodded to one of the others downstairs and headed right for the stalls—because he could’ve been bitten given a dying horse a few seconds of comfort.

JD gripped his rifle and looked back out at the land around them like he was supposed to, but he couldn’t hold in a sigh. He wished he was training the horses, wished he was helping out with the plants—hell, anything but sitting up in this guard house waiting for more of those monsters to come after them all. Maybe kill somebody he cared about someday. Buck… or Casey....

“You okay, kid?”

Buck’s question shook him and he jumped. He hadn’t even heard the older man climb up here. Must have been woolgathering for a while for Buck to be cleared and dressed already.

“You ever wonder whether all of this is ever going to end, Buck?” he asked quietly. 

“Every damn day,” Buck replied candidly. “But I figure we got the best people working on a cure, right?”

JD didn’t know if that was true at all. Sure, Nathan was working with a bunch of different doctors and healers, but… Even if they were all geniuses, didn’t mean they could fix this.

“Tell you what,” Buck said, clapping him gently on the back and holding out a thick envelope. “Why don’t you take this to Nathan and see where we are on making that end happen, huh? I’ll take over here.”

JD looked down and saw that the letter was from the doctor in San Francisco. Cossican. 

“They gotta find an answer someday, JD,” Buck murmured. “Just gonna take a little time.”

JD watched Jake and Mr. Potter ride out on a wagon so they could load the mailman and his horse up and take them off to be burned. Maybe he needed a little good news. He nodded to Buck and took the letter. 

Maybe they all did.

********

“What is all that?” JD asked, as Nathan set Myron Cossican’s drawings aside and sat down to read his letter. The sheets had been made with carbonated paper so that Cossican could send them out to all of the consortium members at once. Nathan had to hope everyone else’s copies had gotten to them safely.

“Pictures of what he seen in his microscope,” Nathan explained. “Hush now and let me read.”

> Gentlemen,
> 
> Mr. Banner continues to survive, even improve in his own way, though his cough is still significant. He has regained his usual wit and strength and can be seen puttering around the grounds here at the university. I keep him under guard at all times—as much for his own protection as for ours. He has fallen into a depression as his symptoms continue, but I hold out faith that he will prevail. 
> 
> Yao, I have tried to obtain some of the Beggar’s Leaf you claim works so well for both cough and mood, but it apparently doesn’t grow here in the far west, or at least we have too few Irish to cultivate it.
> 
> Enclosed with this letter, you will find drawings detailing my findings on the strange contaminant in his blood. Notice the thick, dark (on live examination they are nearly black in color) oblong shapes interspersed with normal healthy cells and these new immunisin cells (they are a darker red than normal cells—I have circled some of them in these drawings). Though the contaminants do not appear to be autonomous creatures, I tell you truly that they  writhe , even separated from the body. I have noted movement up to some eighteen hours after taking a sample. I do not know what to make of it.
> 
> I have noted a decline in the number of these contaminant cells, though the decline is slowing. There is an inverse proliferation of immunisin cells. It is possible, I suppose, that the body will eventually reach homeostasis with the buggers, achieving survival through coexistence.
> 
> I eagerly await word of Jackson and Parker’s patients and pray that Yao continues to see as few of them as he has. We here in San Francisco are mired in hell, but that’s never been a reason to give up a fight. 
> 
> Despite my contention that a simple screening process—much like you have there in Four Corners, Jackson—would allow the authorities to release our students and staff, the university and hospital remain locked down. The police simply refuse to let anyone out for fear of contagion. At least they allow us food and the public water system continues to be safe. We have had no new cases of the disease here in the facility, but a police officer I spoke to says there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead or undead in the city and across the bay as well. It seems we are safer here as lepers than we would be walking freely on the streets.
> 
> Jackson has told me he will be procuring a microscope soon, and I urge him to send us all images of his patient’s blood. Parker has promised to do the same in Denver—though he’s told me he is lacking in craftsmen to build one for him, I feel certain he’ll acquire one some way. 
> 
> Medical knowledge and investigation has never been more vital to survival, my friends. We must fight on until the cure is found. And it will be. Never fear.
> 
> Yours in battle,
> 
> Myron Cossican, medical doctor

“So why is Nicholas doing so well?” Nathan wondered quietly. The man’s cough was nothing like the hacking it had been before… Nathan put down the letter and examined one of the drawings, ignoring JD as his young friend picked up the letter and began to read it silently.

The drawing would have been of a regular dot of blood—leastwise what the textbooks said blood looked like under magnification—but for the black blobs Cossican described. They writhed, he said… 

“Lord, I wish Josiah would hurry up and get back here,” he muttered.

There was a knock on the door that startled them both, even though Nathan had been expecting those notes he’d sent Mary along with to bear him fruit.

“Got your patient some visitors here, Nathan!” Jake Jensen called brightly. Nathan grinned at JD and walked over to let them in.

Sadie Carpenter and her boys stood quietly at the door, flanked on one side by Jake and on the other by Britt Potter, both carrying baskets that let out a rich smell the quarantine house didn’t normally entertain. Sadie looked hopeful and scared and sick and worried all at once, and Nathan smiled carefully and gestured for them all to enter. 

“Nicholas’s been waiting for you,” he told her gently, watching Jake put down his rifle and the basket he held and help Britt start laying out the food. For whatever reason, JD glared at the telegraph man a second before gathering Nathan’s papers and moving them off the eating surface. “Reckon it’ll be best if JD and I help him on down here.”

JD heard him and stalked away from the table, waiting at the base of the stairs for him before following him up. Nathan knocked on Nicholas’s door before entering to find the man sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed—and pale from the exertion of it.

“Saw them… from the window,” Nicholas said, pausing for a breath. He grinned self-consciously. “Didn’t think she should see me lying here in just my drawers.”

Nathan chuckled. “Reckon she’s seen you in worse,” he said, helping the weak man to his feet while JD took his arm on the other side. “And less.”

Nicholas laughed in response, leaning over as it set off a coughing spell. Bad, but still a damn sight better than he’d been having just a week ago. “Reckon you’re right,” he wheezed after a long moment. He looked up at Nathan earnestly. “You got your gun?”

“Ain’t gonna need no gun, Nicholas,” he said, raising his free hand to forestall the man’s protest. “But I got it.”

“Me and Jake do, too, Mr. Carpenter,” JD said, surprising Nathan with his calm, gentle manner. “Come on downstairs and eat?”

Nicholas sighed, but a smile crept over his features as they reached the top of the stairs. “Smells like Sadie’s red beans and rice,” he whispered. “Lord, Nathan, it’ll take you right back to Alabama, I promise you.”

Nathan watched Nicholas’s feet to make sure the weakened man didn’t fall. “Ain’t sure I need to go back there again,” he said wryly. “But I sure could use some good cooking.”

“Then get yourself ready,” Nicholas said, raising his voice with difficulty as they entered the kitchen and Sadie stood up, looking beautiful and in love and terrified. “Because my wife makes the best food damn near anywhere.”

Nathan shared a smile with the rest of the adults while the boys made a face as their parents embraced. Nathan had warned both Sadie and Nicholas that he wasn’t sure whether kissing would be safe, but the two of them wrapped arms around each other tight enough to become one person, and that was damn fine to see.

“Sadie, you can make moon eyes at him all you want afterward,” Britt said, humor and happiness in her voice. “But the food is getting cold and God only knows  _ what _ Nathan has around here to eat if it spoils on us.”

The good natured ribbing broke the mood and the embrace, and Nathan helped Nicholas to a seat, then sat himself, watching as the family reunited, his heart swelling with hope.

Maybe Cossican was right after all. Maybe the battle could be won.

*******  
to be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

“Can we take a quick break here?” Chris asked, bringing his gelding to a stop and gazing around.

Josiah reined in his horse and looked back at Chris. They were almost exactly halfway between Pall and home, a few miles closer to Four Corners than where they’d made camp two nights ago. They had left well before dawn this morning, just as the sky was alight, so it wasn’t much past mid-day, and the land was flat as could be for a couple of miles in each direction. 

“I reckon we have time for a quick lunch,” Josiah allowed. He slid off of Prophet’s back and pulled out a bag with his standard trail rations. Hardly a proper meal, but something to get them through—and something to busy himself with until Chris went ahead and explained what was on his mind.

“This is a good vantage point,” Chris said finally, dismounting and leading his horse over to ground tie it next to Prophet. The palomino had been spoken for, and the horseman hadn’t found another steed to tempt him, so the two geldings were on their own. “Could definitely see ‘em coming long enough to pick ‘em off.”

“You looking to plant roots here or something?” Josiah asked. 

Chris snorted at the notion. “Bailey—the sheriff at Pall? He figures it wouldn’t be a bad idea to build a way station for the stages right around here, since Hadleyburg died out and they made the stage route more direct.” He sighed, taking the jerky Josiah offered to him and looking off into the distance. “World ain’t gonna be what it was, Josiah,” he said fatalistically. “The towns that are gone ain’t coming back, and eventually people aren’t going to be willing to make the mad dash between the few that are left.”

Josiah nodded. “With what happened to Nicholas and his family, I can’t say as I’d blame them.”

“Everyone was damn lucky there, and you know it, preacher,” Chris muttered. “If Nicholas had gone mad in that stage, we’d’ve had to torch the whole thing.”

Which was the sad truth. Josiah looked around himself, assessing. “The ground is soft enough to work,” he said finally. “Reckon it’d be easier to sink a well and just build brick out here than transport lumber and such from one town or the other.” He watched Chris stare off into the plain. “This Bailey? Does he actually have any plans to provide workers for this?”

Chris smiled. “Workers, yes. Craftsmen, no.” He shrugged, dropping to his butt on the ground and uncapping his canteen. “He’s got about a dozen men who’ve said they’d help out. I figure we can provide as many.” The smile turned mocking, though he didn’t look Josiah’s way. “Hear we got a crazy old preacher in Four Corners, too. Knows a little something about building stuff.”

“Really? Must be damn helpful.” Josiah chuckled, then shook his head in wonder at the far-sighted look in his friend’s eyes. “Should we start calling you Mr. Mayor, Chris?” he asked teasingly. “Notorious gunslinger turns civil servant?”

“God, no,” Chris shot back. “You’d need someone a damn sight more slippery than me.”

“Conklin?” Josiah suggested.

“You set Conklin up there, and I’ll start thinking this patch of land looks good after all.” Chris chewed on his jerky for a long moment. “I just reckon it’s about time we realized that nobody’s coming to help. Nathan and his buddies ain’t gonna fix things anytime soon...” He raised determined eyes to Josiah. “I’ve lost enough in my life, preacher,” he said. “Damn sure ain’t giving this up without a fight.”

None of them were. Josiah thought about the discussions he’d had with Nathan, about serendipity and God’s will. Hannah’s death was still an open wound, as raw as whatever secret pain Chris Larabee harbored, but perhaps there really was a greater good to be sought. Perhaps God had brought them all to this town, in this time, with the hopes of saving His creation.

Or letting it save itself.

“Wouldn’t have to be fancy,” he said finally, mapping a place out in his mind. “A small shack—wouldn’t need to hold more than ten—then a wall around the shack and the well, with enough room for the stage and horses to stand inside.”

“A barn,” Chris corrected him. “Sun’s bright out here on the flat. When the rains come, they’re damn harsh, too.”

Josiah chuckled, willing to spend some time dreaming in the sunlight. Better than waiting for the next load of Hell. 

“A barn it is.” He looked out toward home. “Reckon Jensen wouldn’t say no to a direct line from here to there, either. I’ve heard him rail often enough about how it takes three relays to get a message from Pall to home now.”

Chris nodded in satisfaction. “Seems like a plan. No telling how long any town’ll last these days. Might lose those relays, too, sooner or later.”

They both fell silent and finished their meager meal, thinking thoughts of the future.

“Reckon we should get moving,” Josiah said, stowing his gear. “Don’t want Mother Buck to go worrying too much.”

Chris smiled, but tightly. “He does tend to hover.”  _ More than he used to _ , seemed to hang in the air after.

Josiah nodded, standing by his horse and waiting for Chris to mount up. “A man sees too many families lost, he starts to worry on his own.”

He didn’t miss Chris’s moment of stock-still pain, but he didn’t remark on it either. Even after months of friendship, it was still Chris’s story to tell and he hadn’t done it yet. The younger man shook it off and they headed for home without another word.

They were halfway there and the sun was starting its fireshow on the horizon when Chris stopped his horse.

“Stage ain’t due for another couple of days,” he remarked, looking out toward the west.

Josiah followed his gaze, seeing the dust on the horizon and the growing shape of a coach and four. “Nope,” he agreed. “Looks like Four Corners might have company coming.”

Chris suddenly spurred his horse into a gallop, shouting behind him. “Looks like they do, too!”

Josiah pushed his own mount to flank Chris’s so he could get a clear view of what was going on. “Bandits?” he asked, surprised to see not undead, but very much alive pursuers. Three men on horseback were bearing down on an expensive-looking coach. There was only the driver up top, but as Chris and Josiah neared it, a shotgun fired from the side window, scattering the riders for a moment and giving the pair from Four Corners a chance to close the distance.

“What the hell are they carrying that’s so damned important?” Chris wondered, pulling his rifle and trying to wing one of the bandits. The vehicle jerked to the side and kept going, veering away from Four Corners.

“Anything’s valuable these days,” Josiah remarked, not sure he was heard over the sudden gunfire they drew. He fired his own rifle at the same moment the man in the coach did, and one of them got lucky, knocking one of the riders off his horse. The horse continued at the same breakneck speed as the rest of them, leaving the bandit wounded or dead in the dirt. Josiah didn’t rightly care which.

The coach driver was an expert and kept the horses galloping fiercely as the gunfight continued. Chris was the next to be hit, but he managed to drop over his horse’s neck and stay on. Josiah fired again and took out another rider.

The third had no stomach for dying in the wilderness, and peeled off, headed for parts unknown.

“Chris!?” Josiah shouted, concerned when Chris took more time than the rest of them to slow down. 

The younger man managed to turn his horse, walking him back to where the coach was rolling to a stop. “I’m okay,” he called, not that Josiah believed a word of it. He was barely sitting his horse and Josiah rode up alongside him as they approached the vehicle.

“Can’t thank you all enough!” the driver called, climbing down from the seat and dusting himself off. “Funny, I figured all I’d have to deal with out here was running away from  _ deiyape _ . At least the undead don’t usually shoot at you.” He opened the passenger door and peered in. “Judge? You all okay?”

Josiah helped Chris off his horse, seating him on the ground as a man of about sixty-five or seventy stepped solidly out of the coach. He was dressed in a fine black suit with a long coat that spoke of importance, or at least money. “We’re fine, Finnegan, thanks,” he said, his voice commanding. “It appears our rescuers could use a little help, though.”

Chris grunted at that, but Josiah ignored him as he took in the injury and started rooting around in his bag for his meager medical supplies. The rifle shot was providentially placed, went straight through from front to back, and didn’t look like it had hit much vital. They wouldn’t have to worry about pulling out a bullet in the middle of nowhere.

Problem was, the gunfight had taken longer than it seemed to and they’d gone off course for a few miles at least. The sun was dipping under the land and they were at least four hours from home at the rate a wounded man could travel.

“Ain’t gonna make it home before full dark,” Chris gritted in pain, mirroring Josiah’s thoughts.

“Nope,” Josiah agreed. 

“Are you headed to Four Corners?” the old man asked, kneeling down to take a look at Chris’s wound. “I’d be more than happy to thank you by giving him a ride in the coach.”

Josiah shook his head. “I need to get the bleeding stopped before we try to go anywhere,” he said, his heart dropping. “Looks like we’re out here for the night.” 

“Finnegan, can we get some of the blankets out of the luggage?” the old man asked, standing and directing his man. 

“You ain’t obliged—” Josiah started, only to be cut off like a child taken to task.

“You and your friend saved our lives,” the old man snapped. “I’m hardly going to leave you out here on your own.” He looked at Chris, who did seem to be trying to keep track of the situation as he sat there bleeding. “Judge Oren Travis,” he introduced himself.

“Travis as in Mary Travis?” Chris gritted out, fighting against Josiah when he added pressure to the wound.

Travis raised an eyebrow. “My daughter-in-law,” he confirmed. 

“She’s a good woman,” Josiah said, nodding to Finnegan as the young man dropped a few blankets on the ground beside Chris. “Reckon we should get a fire started.”

Finnegan nodded. “Got some camp wood up top. I’ll stand first watch,” he promised.

Josiah took a quick look at Chris’s wound. Bleeding seemed to be slowing down. “Appreciate that,” he replied. He looked over at the coach and spied a little blond head peeking out of one curtained window. “It looks like you didn’t come alone, your honor.”

Travis turned and headed back to the coach. “It’s okay, Billy,” he called quietly, his voice surprisingly gentle. “These men helped us. Time we did the same.”

A boy of perhaps eight or nine stepped cautiously down from the coach, fair-haired and fancily dressed. He clung to the old man but watched Chris and Josiah with wide blue eyes.

“My name is Josiah,” Josiah said, equally gently. “This here is Chris.”

Chris had a sudden haunted look in his eyes, but mustered a smile for the little boy.

“Is he okay?” young Billy whispered.

“Working on it,” Chris replied softly. “We’re just glad you and your grandfather are okay.” He made the family relation a question, but it was plain to see the similarities.

“Less squirming, more resting, Chris,” Josiah scolded him, glad Finnegan was getting the fire going beside them, a coffeepot and rig waiting for the heat to start. He didn’t think Chris was in any danger, but the wounded man had started shivering. “We’ll get something warm into you once I get the bleeding stopped.”

“Why don’t you get your friend settled?” Judge Travis all but commanded. “We’ll see to the rest.”

Josiah nodded his thanks and concentrated on caring for Chris as the younger man’s energy flagged.

*********

It was nearing ten the next morning and the torture hadn’t ended yet. 

Chris hazily remembered Josiah getting the bleeding stopped and had woken in the night to find the judge watching over the camp, wandering from one side of it to the other, eyes to the darkness instead of the fire. Looked like a tough guy.

The coach bounced hard again, and Chris held in a groan. His shoulder hurt like hellfire, but he’d had worse. Didn’t make the ten mile trek inside the vehicle any less painful, though.

But the little boy, Billy, hadn’t taken his eyes off of him the entire time, fear and worry thick in eyes that were bluer than Adam’s had been, but with just the same curiosity and intelligence. Looked like the kid had been through a lot, his eyes fighting to stay open so he wouldn’t miss a thing. Like Adam when the adults would stay up late and—

Chris shoved the memory away and just gritted his teeth and waited for the familiar sound of the alarm bells on the eastern guard tower.

“My daughter-in-law has written me about the changes in Four Corners since all this foolishness started,” Travis said, turning from his perusal of the dust and dirt outside to give Chris a measured look. “It sounds like you and your friends have things well in hand, Mr. Larabee.”

Chris snorted. Josiah must have provided the man with last names at some point. “We’re just trying to survive, Judge,” he said simply, grimacing as the vehicle lurched again, knocking his wounded shoulder into the wall. He should have pushed Josiah about riding his horse home, but the preacher had been adamant. “Same as everyone.”

“Doesn’t sound like it’s just your own survival you’re concerned with,” Travis replied. 

“What did those bandits want with you?” Chris asked instead of answering. “Ain’t much that’d entice a man from the safety of civilization that close to nightfall.”

“They weren’t looking to rob us,” Travis said with a sigh, looking at the boy carefully. Billy was finally sleeping and the old man sighed. “I’m the new territorial judge in these parts, and I’m sure you’ve heard that the governor or the president or the army is to blame for all of this.” The derision in his tone wasn’t as thick as the weariness. “There are places that haven’t fared nearly as well as Four Corners,” he remarked sadly.

Four bells rang in the distance, and Chris breathed a sigh of relief. Finnegan urged a bit more speed from the horses, and it wasn’t another half hour before Chris heard the large doors open in the eastern wall. He took a bracing breath as he heard Buck shout Josiah’s name, fear and worry thick in his tone as he no doubt saw Josiah riding alone beside the coach, Pony tied to the back.

“Where the hell is he?!” Buck called, like it was Josiah’s fault Chris wasn’t immediately visible.

“He’s inside, Buck,” Josiah said calmly. Chris sat up a little straighter so he could see his friends. Buck looked positively green. The coach rolled to a stop and Chris reached for the door as Josiah continued. “We ran into some trouble.”

“Trouble,” Buck murmured. “He wasn’t—”

“Human trouble, Buck,” he answered for himself. He stepped down from the vehicle and strove to sound hale and hearty despite his desire to sleep for a week straight. “We’re fine.” He let Buck stare at him a while, no doubt taking in the bloodstained shirt and half-assed sling, the pale face and tired eyes.

The judge and Billy had climbed out as well, and the bell rang for a woman or child check. Chris watched Mary Travis come bustling out of the newspaper—he’d never figured out the women’s duty schedule, but she must have been on—watched her stop dead in the middle of the street and stare at the new arrivals. 

“Billy!” she shouted, pulling up her skirts and running at a damn respectable pace. Chris quirked a smile as she nearly smothered the boy who had only just woken up.

Tiny, Jerry, and Batt Mullins stepped forward, ready to lead the way to the screening stalls.

“Judge Travis,” Josiah said by way of introduction, “Mr. Finnegan? This is Jurgen Tjäder and Batt Mullins. We got ourselves a process here, though I know you said you haven’t had much sight of the undead for a while. They’re gonna check you both out. Make sure you ain’t been bit.” He smiled at Mary, who hadn’t let go of her son quite yet. “Figure Mrs. Travis has Billy in hand, so to speak.”

Finnegan shook his head. “Thought you were joking, sir,” he said, giving Judge Travis an amused look.

“Oren!” Mary moved to give her father-in-law a quick hug while Batt led Finnegan away and Tiny waited patiently to do the same for Travis. “I didn’t think you’d arrive so soon!”

“And I didn’t think you’d be so late,” Buck grumbled at Chris, the evidence of a worry-filled night still in his eyes. 

He led Chris to a stall and stood tall and pissed as Chris started to painfully work his way out of his clothes. He got to trying to remove his shirt and glared at his friend.

“You could at least help!”

“I ain’t gonna help,” Buck growled. “Still mad as hell at you.”

Chris sighed. “Be mad as hell but help anyway, all right?” he suggested. Something more than just him and Josiah being late was getting to his friend. Buck grunted and stepped toward him, helping him gently out of his sling and shirt. “What’s been going on here?” Chris asked in just the right tone to get Buck talking.

“Mail carrier came up bit and already turned, day after you left. Got JD to thinking about whether any of us is gonna survive this.” He blew out a breath and calmed right down, like just talking about it was enough to fix it. “Then you all came up late, and…”

The silence went on for a long minute before Chris spoke. “Judge and his grandson are here to see Mary Travis,” he offered. “Reckon they might not’ve been if Josiah and I hadn’t happened upon ‘em.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m still angry.” Buck conceded grudgingly. He looked him over top to bottom and front to back. “Guess I’d better get Nathan to come patch you up so I can keep being pissed, huh?”

Chris sat down, resting a second before he started struggling back into his drawers and pants. “Only if you want me to be there while you yell at me,” he threw out, freezing when he realized how that sounded.

“Real glad you’re back, Chris,” Buck said quietly. He turned and yelled for Nathan, leaving the stall without waiting for Chris to be done. 

“Glad I am, too,” Chris whispered. 

********

“So what the hell is that supposed to be, then?” Buck asked, twisting the knob at the side of Josiah’s finally-completed microscope. Josiah and Chris had been home two days now, but it had taken this long to fit the lenses properly. “Doesn’t look like nothing but a red blur.”

“Stop your fiddling and maybe you’ll see something,” Nathan grumbled, moving the curious man out of the way and resetting the focus on the delicate instrument. “And be careful, you hear? Wasn’t like this was easy to make.” He gazed in momentary wonder at the crisp clear image of a few dozen neat circles.

“Now normal blood is mostly these round ones—red blood cells. Well, red on the outside and almost white when you get to the center of them,” he explained, eye still glued to the eyepiece. “There’s a few different ones, though, sort of uneven shaped and more grayish. Leukocytes, they’re called—or white blood cells.” He let loose an awed little chuckle. His own damn blood, right there, plain as day. He’d seen drawings in books, sure, but this...

“Nathan, it ain’t your blood we’re interested in,” Josiah teased quietly, shaking him out of it. 

Nathan pulled back, embarassed for a second until he saw the eager looks on both Buck and Josiah’s faces. They were like a bunch of little kids with a new toy. Just for this moment.

“Take a look now, Buck,” he said, gesturing to the device. “And don’t touch the knob.”

“Damn.” Buck seemed equally stunned, now he could see them. “That’s what your blood looks like, huh?”

Nathan reached for the carefully labelled slides he’d prepared this morning, and for the sheaf of papers and pencil he had ready to draw what he found. “That’s what  _ my _ blood looks like,” he agreed. “Normal blood.” Buck stepped out of the way to let Josiah take a look through the eyepiece, and Nathan waited impatiently until the instrument’s creator was done.

“This is Nicholas’s blood,” he said quietly, replacing the slide he had in the clip with the new one. “Now, I just made that this morning, so Cossican said the contaminant should still be moving around.”

He put his eye to the microscope and clicked his tongue at the way Josiah had had to adjust it to see. “Maybe you should look at grinding yourself some eyeglasses, Josiah,” he grumbled. He carefully turned the knob, adjusting the lenses until… “My God.”

“What is it?” Buck asked, crowding him.

The spots were there, just like Cossican said. Black and evil and wiggling. There were eight of them in the slide, and three of them looked like they were attached to red blood cells. Like they was feeding on them. There were those immune cells, too. Lots of them… Nathan jerked away from the microscope and reached for the drawings from San Francisco. Josiah slid into his place—Buck grunted angrily, but didn’t fight it—and whistled. “That doesn’t look right, Nathan.”

“It ain’t,” Nathan agreed. He walked back over and regained his place at the instrument, ignoring Buck’s howl of indignation, and compared the reality with the sketch in his hand. 

“Nicholas has more of those immunisins than Cossican’s man does,” he mused, looking at the way the longer, thinner, darker red cells took up as much space as the red blood cells. There were no leukocytes, either. “Wonder if that’s why he’s getting so much better?”

“So what now?” Buck asked, looking into the microscope now he finally had a turn. “Damn. Are the immunithings going to kill the black ones?”

Nathan shook his head. “No way to tell from that slide,” he said. “The contaminant cells probably ain’t interested in dead blood, elsewise the zombies’d feed on the dead and well as the living.”

“Now there’s a sick thought,” Buck muttered. Nathan wasn’t sure why feeding on the dead was somehow  _ more _ disturbing than feeding on live people, but he let it go. “He’s getting better, though, right?”

Nathan sat back, his pen poised over his notebook though he purely did not know what he would write there. “I think he actually is, yeah,” he said quietly, like to speak too loud would damn the words. “Only thing he needs now is feeding up. And something to quiet that damn cough of his.” He felt a wave like hope run through him for a second. 

“So it might really  _ be _ a question of making sure they don’t get dead?” Buck asked, as afraid to say the words as Nathan was. “Just… keep ‘em alive long enough to let ‘em fight it off?”

“Those that can, yeah,” Nathan agreed. “Looks like, if a body’s strong enough, it’ll eventually just be… a stalemate.” 

Josiah’s next words sobered them both up quickly. “But will he be safe? Once he’s fought it off?” Buck’s confused look said he didn’t understand the question. Too damn bad Nathan did. “If it’s still in his blood, can he pass it on?”

Nathan thought on it a long moment. “Hell, I don’t know, Josiah,” he finally said. “If you ain’t got any symptoms, and you ain’t biting people, you should be safe.” He sighed. “Mrs. Meyers up in Denver’s been living with her family for nearly a month now. If she was gonna pass it on to someone, you’d think she’d’ve done it by now.”

“So…” Josiah took a long time to say what Nathan had sort of known he was going to. “Nicholas could be back with his family? He could come in to Four Corners?”

Buck shook his head. “Now wait a minute,” he said, hands up to stop them both. “That don’t sound like the best idea.”

“Why not?” Nathan said quietly, something miraculous thrumming through him. “If I can get him stronger, make sure his body’s keeping the contaminant down… There ain’t no reason to keep him here.”

“I can think of a couple hundred reasons to, Nathan,” Buck retorted.

“Three of ‘em is all I care about.”

Nicholas’s soft, exhausted voice cut through the argument clean as a knife and all three of them turned to see him hanging onto the doorframe that led to the stairs. 

“Nicholas,” Nathan began.

“No,” Nicholas stopped him. “I ain’t risking them if you ain’t sure,” he said. “None of y’all know the first thing about what they done to me. I ain’t gonna hurt Sadie and the boys.”

“I’m not talking about letting you loose now,” Nathan replied, placating him as best he could. “But you’re getting better. There’s a lady in Denver, was bit a long time before you, and she’s living happy with her family, Nicholas. Don’t you want that?”

Nicholas’s eyes filled with tears. “I want my wife to live,” he whispered. “Want my boys to grow up. I don’t want to… to be the monster that kills ‘em.”

“You ain’t a monster, Nicholas,” Nathan barked back, on his feet in anger. “You survived, damn it! What the hell was the point of fighting through if you’re gonna just abandon them anyway?”

“I ain’t abandoning them—” 

“Gentlemen, I don’t think this conversation is getting us anywhere,” Josiah interrupted. “Nathan, why don’t you talk to Parker and Cossican and see how their patients are doing—see if Parker’s got his microscope up and running and what he’s found?” He looked Nicholas square in the face. “You can choose to live like a leper if you want to, Nicholas, no matter what Nathan finds out.” He shook his head. “Just keep in mind that you might be condemning every other survivor we might find to the same fate. If you don’t think you’re safe, the town won’t think so either.”

Nicholas balled his hands into fists but didn’t rise to the bait.

“Write up a telegram, Nathan,” Buck said into the heavy silence. “I’ll make sure Jake gets it out before the lines close for the night.”

Nathan looked away from the tense staring contest between Josiah and Nicholas. “Yeah. Let me just get something down for you.” He thought a moment and wrote out another of those terse, vague messages that he and the doctors had all but perfected. The dots and dashes of a telegram passed through a thousand pairs of ears before they got to where they was going. And it only took one set to raise a panic.

> _ NC improving. Considering return to family. Regarding B and M health and transfer, please advise. Are pictures coming? _

Buck read it and grunted. “Transfer… You’re asking whether they’re contagious, right?”

“Asking whether Nicholas is a danger,” Nathan said, the words finally breaking Nicholas’s glare at Josiah. Brown eyes met brown. “Because if you ain’t, you got a wife and kids that need you.”

And if he was? What the hell were they going to do then?

*********

> _ M safe as houses. Suggest NC go home. Pictures coming via post. Dr. Parker _
> 
> _ B could leave if possible. Suggest monitoring. Myron Cossican, Doctor _

Chris read the two telegrams Nathan put in front of him and looked up at the earnest healer. Buck sat on Chris’s right side, radiating stress, and JD Dunne had somehow gotten himself invited along, sitting between Buck and Nathan and trying to look at everyone at once. 

“What are you saying?” Chris asked, knowing damn well what the answer was and how much of a God-awful stink it was going to make around here.

“Nicholas ain’t a danger anymore,” he said quietly. “Leastwise if he’s careful.”

“Careful how?” Chris asked. “You said he had things living in his blood. Hell, what if he cuts himself? The man’s a woodworker—his life is sharp things.”

“Like I said,” Nathan repeated. “Careful.” He shook his head. “There’s no proof the contaminant gets passed by anything but bite.”

Chris looked past him to see Josiah lounging in the doorway, subtly keeping the conversation private since they were the only people in the saloon currently. “What do you have to say about this, old man?” he asked sharply.

“A man shouldn’t be separated from his wife and children if he don’t have to be.”

Josiah’s words sliced through Chris for an instant, but this wasn’t like Sarah and Adam. This wasn’t like anything any of them had ever dealt with at all, in fact.

“You sure, Nathan?” he asked, feeling Buck’s anxiety grow next to him. “If you’re wrong…”

“I ain’t wrong,” Nathan said. “I been checking his blood every day for a week now—ever since we got the microscope working. His body keeps on making those special cells and it looks like the contaminant is getting to be less. And Mrs. Meyers up in Denver? She’s been living with her family now for nearly a month. She ain’t turned on them, and Nicholas won’t either.”

Buck’s agitation demanded attention. “What about you, Buck?” Chris asked. “What do you think?”

“I think he’d better be damn careful,” Buck replied. “And not just about cutting himself. People ain’t gonna trust him and you know it.” He looked at Nathan, and Chris saw the pain of that first six months of the epidemic bleeding through. Buck, who had always been so good at letting things go, just couldn’t seem to get beyond what he’d seen as he travelled the territory. “It ain’t that I think he’s going to lash out and start attacking people, Nathan,” he said, trying to get the other man to understand. “But him being inside the walls is liable to cause more fights than we can win. I seen it happen even without a person being bit—whole towns torn apart by this, killing well and sick and everybody, just out of fear alone.”

“So we let the fear win?” Josiah asked, wandering over. “We... what? Consign the survivors to their own separate towns? Seems to me if we do that, we might as well not fight to help them survive at all.”

“Buck’s got a point, though,” Chris said, trying hard not to make this sound like they were doing just what Josiah was warning against. “You, me, Nathan? We might think he’s safe to come inside—hell, we might even be able to convince most of the town of the fact. For a while, anyway. But some are going to worry, and they’re going to talk.”

“And you’re just going to let them?” Josiah asked. 

Chris resisted the urge to slam a fist down like a five-year-old. “I can’t stop a man from thinking, Josiah—from talking. And I ain’t in charge of this damn town!”

“Funny,” Josiah replied mildly. “There’re an awful lot of people who think you are.”

“They’re all damn fools then,” Chris grumbled. He looked at each of the men around him, already knowing what they had to do. Like Josiah said, if they were going to fight to save these people, they had to fight to keep them safe, too. “This could get ugly.”

“Not as ugly as you think, Mr. Larabee.”

Mary Travis stood in the doorway, hesitant to come in, even though she was bold enough with her words. “There are a lot of us who have been praying for Mr. Carpenter to recover.” She did take a step in the door then, looking strong and worried and damned earnest. “I’d like to help.”

“I’m sure he appreciates your sentiment, Ms. Travis,” Buck replied, not unkindly. “Don’t mean there aren’t a whole lot of others who wouldn’t mind seeing him stay outside the walls forever.”

“So we convince them,” JD said staunchly.

Chris took a long pull on his whiskey. He was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be near that easy.

*******

They picked midday the next day to leave the quarantine. The whole town would be out and about at that point and they didn’t want to make it seem like they were trying to sneak in with him. And Nicholas wouldn’t have let them anyway.

“Figure I’ll face my fate in the light of day,” he said, standing tall and strong finally. It’d taken time to build his health back up, but he looked nearly normal now, though he tired quickly and coughed like he was going to tear a lung.

JD stood on one side of him, watching Jerry Dennehy give the signal to open the gate. The undertaker was one of the ones on their side, and Mrs. Travis had made sure most of those people were near the western gate round about now. Still, JD worried this was going to be trouble. 

But not more trouble than it was worth. The gate opened, and Sadie and the boys were standing right inside, Mary Travis and her father-in-law and her son to one side of them. The judge looked like he’d take on the whole town for this, and he hadn’t been here but a week or so. 

The whole lot of ‘em, Josiah and Nathan and Buck and Chris and JD and Nicholas—even terrified as he looked—walked to the inspection stalls to be met by six men ready to check ‘em over, even though they’d only been to the quarantine and back.

“You’re doing it?!” Mr. Conklin’s voice was grating and shocked and JD almost stopped, but Buck nodded him on toward where Mr. Potter stood by an open stall. 

“Mr. Larabee!” Conklin continued, furious at being ignored. “You can’t bring him in here!”

Chris turned finally, looking down at Conklin like he was some kind of bug. “Reckon Mr. Carpenter’s free to go wherever he wants, Conklin,” he said easily, but with an edge to it. JD stepped into his stall and stripped quick, and Mr. Potter checked him just as quick, wanting to watch the confrontation as well. 

“That…  _ man, _ ” Conklin continued, sounding like Nicholas was the bug, “is a danger to this community.”

“Can you prove that?” Chris asked.

Conklin sputtered. “He’s been bit by one of  _ them _ , Larabee! He’ll turn on us, mark my words!” He gazed around at the crowd that had gathered, looking for and seeing some supporters. They’d discussed this out in the quarantine, and JD slipped out of the inspection stall, gathered his guns, and headed quietly into the throng. They were all supposed to spread out, be ready for trouble…

“He can’t turn now,” Nathan said clearly, no-nonsense voice carrying over the crowd. “The disease is spread by parasites in the blood,” he explained, simplifying it for all these people who hadn’t been working with him for months now. “He ain’t got enough parasites left to pass it on. He’s fought it off.”

“You can’t fight off the Death Sickness,” someone yelled from the crowd. 

“You can!” Mary Travis disagreed, her voice as striking and strong as Nathan’s. “He isn’t the first to survive it,” she went on, when she’d gotten people’s attention. “If a person can be cared for through the worst of the sickness, if they can be kept alive, they don’t turn.”

“And how would you know this?” Mr. Wheeler asked, as scared as a rabbit, like always. “All you have are stories.”

“And the man before you!” Josiah proclaimed, like he was in the pulpit and giving a sermon. “Nicholas Carpenter has been through something none of us can contemplate—something none of us  _ want _ to contemplate.” He gestured to Nicholas and his wife, who stood hand in hand with their boys beside them. “He has battled back from a disease that claims far more than it releases. But he persevered.” He glanced into the crowd, and JD saw Buck nearby there. “If we cast him out for surviving, who’s to save us when the time comes?” he asked. He pegged Wheeler with a look that had the old man backing down, then shifted his gaze. “Who’s to open the gates for you, Mr. Conklin?”

“Well, I would never—A man should stay where it’s safe,” Conklin said, stumbling over his words as he must have felt the tide turn against him. “You can’t just assume he’s cured. You can’t put the rest of us in danger when we’ve worked so hard for the safety we have.”

“Didn’t see you lifting a finger to build that wall, John,” Jake Jensen piped up, quiet and mocking. “Seem to remember you cowering in your office and waiting for the monsters to go away on their own.”

“We’re not going to assume anything,” Nathan said into the chuckles that followed the jab. “Nicholas is gonna have his blood checked regularly for the parasite, to make sure it don’t come back.”

“But—”

“This is new to all of us,” Chris said, silencing the anonymous protest instantly. “We’re not saying we got all the answers, but what if it were you? Think about if it was your husband, your father, your son.” He looked around at all of them. “You want to be the one to bar the door against him?”

Conklin just couldn’t let it go, though the town had sided with the five of them already. “If he kills anyone, it’ll be on your head, Larabee,” he growled, trying to be menacing.

“I’m kind of hoping if he does, he goes for you first,” Buck said, lazy as a mountain lion ready to strike. “Why don’t you get back to your bean counting, Conklin,” he said, kicking off from his place leaning against the saloon wall so he could head for the Carpenters. “Let us worry about the important stuff.”

And like a sheep being told off by a dog, Conklin stalked off with his tail between his legs. Most of the rest of the crowd went with him, though a fair number of the city guard and a few of the families stayed around, the former keeping an eye out for trouble while the latter welcomed Nicholas into the fold.

“That was almost fun,” JD proclaimed, striding up to where the Travises were standing. The rest of the five of them started congregating, too.

“Don’t expect it to last,” Josiah said quietly. “Conklin may be an old fool, but I’m sure he ain’t alone.”

“You might want to increase the law’s presence on the streets, men,” Judge Travis suggested. “At least until Mr. Carpenter gets properly settled.”

JD snorted at that. “The law? Well, heck, Judge, we ain’t even got a sheriff.” 

Travis looked at him seriously. “Are you looking for a job, son?”

It wasn’t the first time JD Dunne had been struck speechless, but he truly gaped. Sheriff? Him?

Buck slapped him on the back. “Now, the boy doesn’t mean that, Judge.”

“Yes I do.” And he did, truly.

It was Buck’s turn to lose his voice, and JD took a kind of perverse pleasure in it.

After all, they were going to have to take him seriously sooner or later.

********

A month later, Buck was never more happy to eat crow.

Nicholas and his family had been thriving, though his cough never really went away. There’d been trouble here and there, and he wasn’t the most sought-after woodworker in the town, but people were adjusting to seeing a man who’d been bitten and survived, living among the rest of them like a normal person.

Buck was a big enough man to admit when he was wrong, and he’d almost started to relax, to believe that, maybe, some sort of humanity might make it through all this. If one survivor could be accepted—for the most part—into a community, why not more, right?

The judge and his man Finnegan had moved on, leaving the eerily silent Billy Travis behind. Mary Travis was glad to have her son back with her, now she and his grandparents had deemed Four Corners safe enough for him to come back, but he wasn’t exactly fitting in. Buck knew the child’s story—he’d been hiding in the closet when his father was murdered and hadn’t been the same since. So far, the only person he’d connected with here in town was Chris, and that just barely. Of course, Buck could see Adam in the little boy, same as Chris could, but it was good to see that his old friend was able to reach out to him despite that. 

JD was insane. Four Corners might be protected from  _ no muertos _ by the wall, but no one could protect a town from actual people. Being a sheriff was a dangerous proposition, and the kid was crazy for ever taking it on. That said, he’d dealt with the troubles that occasionally visited them all with a firm hand without pissing anyone off too much. Sure, he had the rest of the five of them to back him up if he needed them—unofficial peacekeepers, sort of—but he could hold his own when he needed to. Hell, maybe there was more than meets the eye to the kid after all.

Buck had been mentioning just that when Jake Jensen walked into the saloon one afternoon, a queer look on his face. 

“Hey Jake,” Buck called to him, seeing the yellow slip in his hand. “What’s the matter? Ronnie decide running messages wasn’t his cup of tea?”

“No,” Jake said, sliding into a seat at the table where Buck, Chris, and Nathan sat having a beer. “I, um… I needed to deliver this one myself.” He stared at Nathan with the bleakest look and Buck felt something turn in his stomach. “Didn’t want any other eyes or ears on it.”

Nathan took the telegram and read it, his face falling when he did.

“What happened, Nathan?” Chris murmured, saving Buck from shouting the question.

“Mrs. Meyers died,” Nathan replied in a whisper. “Says she took her daughter and husband with her.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Don’t say nothing about her son.”

“Lord,” Buck whispered. His thoughts went to Nicholas and his family. How had this happened? “What do we do?” he asked instead.

“We keep going,” Chris said, having taken the paper from Nathan’s still hands and read it himself. “Don’t say exactly what happened. Parker says he’ll send more information by post. ‘Do nothing until you hear more.’” He put the paper on the table face down. “So that’s what we do.”

“But shouldn’t we tell Nicholas?” Buck murmured, all too aware that they weren’t on their own in the saloon. If word of this got out, he knew a few people who’d be ready to set up a firing squad right on top of the damn ash pit to save themselves the trouble of dragging Carpenter’s body out to burn.

“Not until I know something more,” Nathan said quietly. “I can’t do that to him. Not now.” 

Buck knew what he meant. Nicholas and his family had been struggling just to survive before they ever ran into those  _ no muertos _ outside of town. They had a good home now—a good life. 

“Damn,” he whispered.

********

Nathan stared at the blood sample he’d taken from Nicholas just yesterday. He still had that mix of red blood cells and immunisins, but there was only one contaminant cell. One. Even if you multiplied that by the thousands of teaspoonsful of blood in your body, there was just no way they could overwhelm a person. Not with so few of them.

Unless they were all wrong about what was causing this in the first place. 

Even with Nicholas living inside the walls, Nathan spent some of his time out here in the quarantine house. It was essentially under 24-hour guard, so he felt like the medicines he had out here were mostly looked after, and it was a safer place to keep the blood samples.

He looked at the shelf where he kept all the vials of blood he’d taken, both from Nicholas and from the other victims. The ones who hadn’t made it. The five racks of vials were all carefully labeled, but he didn’t see the words and scraps of white. He saw the separations. 

Blood separated into parts when you took it out of a body. People didn’t usually notice, of course, because you were mostly looking at a puddle of it from a cut or a gunshot wound. But when you put it in a vial and left it to settle out, you got a layer of yellow, which was a kind of universal component, some newer theories held, the same in everybody; a tiny layer of sticky white leukocytes, that fought infection; and a dark, thick layer of red blood cells, the ones you needed to stay alive.

Except that Nicholas’s blood—all of the bitten’s blood—had a layer of black at the bottom, where the contaminant was. It was easy to see in the vials of those who’d died, sometimes thicker than the red cell layer, but Nathan hadn’t noticed until now that what he’d taken to be just more of the contaminant layer in Nicholas’s vials since he’d started to improve was actually another level entirely, darker red than normal blood, but definitely not contaminant.

“The immunsins,” he whispered, picking up the latest vial carefully and really studying it. The first real conversation he’d had with Chris Larabee suddenly floated through his mind: 

> _ “If a man survives the bite, might be he could be fine afterward.” _
> 
> _ “Like smallpox,” Chris had said. “Except smallpox don’t turn corpses into rabid animals.” _
> 
> _ “So maybe the trick is to keep them from becoming corpses,” was Josiah’s reply. _

Vaccination… There was no way he could ever agree to actually infecting someone with the epidemic, of course, but people who fought the disease had something in their blood besides the contaminant. Maybe if they could use that, isolate it. Probably just another damn theory that wouldn't pan out, but...

He pulled down the rack of test tubes and set it on the table so he could make a sketch of the contents of some of Nicholas’s samples to send to the others. Whatever had happened with Mrs. Meyers, they didn’t know for sure that the other survivors would turn, too—assuming that was what happened to her. They had to do what Cossican was always saying. Keep working. Keep trying to find the answer.

He’d finished his sketches and written a letter on some of his precious stock of carbonated paper when there was a knock at the door. He looked up, surprised to see it was nearing night. Probably Josiah, come out to fetch him. 

“I’m coming, you old hen,” he grumbled loudly as he opened the door. Nicholas Carpenter stood before him, anger and fear and desperation in his eyes. “Nicholas?” Nathan asked carefully. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“That’s my question,” Nicholas asked harshly, coming in when Nathan stepped aside. “Except I already know.” He all but growled his words. “But I should’ve heard it from  _ you _ !”

Nathan’s heart skipped. “Mrs. Meyers,” he breathed. “Nicholas, we don’t know what happened—”

“She killed her husband and child!” Nicholas yelled. “That’s what happened!” 

“All we know is that—” Nathan began, only to be cut off as Nicholas produced a gun. Nathan raised his hands.

“You promised me, Nathan,” Nicholas grated, the pistol aiming everywhere and nowhere. “You  _ promised _ me you’d keep them safe and then you sent me back in there like a wolf in the henhouse.”

“No, come on, now—” Nathan tried to work his way toward the table again, damning himself for taking off his gun. Nicholas was all but demented. Didn’t look like it was the disease, though. Just pure anger and fear. “Nicholas, we need to just…”

“I  _ know _ what I need to do, Nathan,” Nicholas whispered, bringing the gun up. “Should’ve done it a long time ago. Shouldn’t’ve let you fill my head with promises—fill  _ her _ head!”

He put the gun to his own temple.

Later, Nathan was sure he must have cried out when Carpenter pulled the trigger, but at the time, the gunshot itself, and everything after, was silent.

Josiah and Buck came barrelling in at some point, and Nathan remembered Josiah saying something about Sadie coming to him, afraid.

God, the fear in Nicholas’s eyes! Fear for them, pure and simple and deadly.

He couldn’t reckon the time that had passed before he found himself staring at a glass full of whiskey and a bottle empty of it, seated at the end of the table. The letter he’d been so eager to send was there on the far side of it, mocking him.

“It wasn’t your fault, Nathan,” Josiah said quietly. “You know that.”

Nathan drank the whiskey in one go, noticing finally that it did indeed have company in his gut. “May not have been my gun that killed him, but I drove him to it.” He shook his head. “God damned fool to think I could do anything about this. Maybe you’re right, preacher. Maybe it is all God’s retribution.”

_ And maybe we God damned deserve it, _ he added silently.  _ For hubris if nothing else. _

“I’m thinking maybe you should sleep it off, Nathan,” Josiah replied without replying to a blessed thing. “See how things look in the morning.”

Nathan let the old man pull him to his feet and he looked at the blood still staining the floor in the middle of the room. He hoped like hell they’d bury Nicholas inside the walls. He couldn’t bear the poor man being consigned to the burning pits they’d saved him from once already.

“Ain’t gonna look any better,” Nathan told him.

“Probably not,” Josiah agreed. “But you’re sleeping it off anyway.”

Nathan sighed as he was dropped heavily onto his bed and the alcohol rolled him over into unconsciousness.

_ Why not sleep? _ was his final thought.  _ Sleep and let the nightmares come. This time, at least your sisters’ll be telling you the truth when they say you’re not good enough. _

*******

Josiah waited until dawn to leave the quarantine, and that only because Buck came in to keep an eye on Nathan for him. Not that he expected the healer to be conscious any time soon, but it won’t hurt for him to have someone there to answer questions.

They had moved Nicholas to Jerry Dennehy’s place—neither Josiah nor Buck could stand the idea of burning him in the pit. He wasn’t one of  _ them _ , no matter what he’d thought himself, there at the end.

The real concern was that they had no idea how Nicholas had found out about Mrs. Meyers in the first place, which meant if he knew, there was no reason to believe that others didn’t. They’d have a hell of a time convincing them all that trying to save these people was still worth it.

If it even was.

Banishing the thought, Josiah walked into the telegraph office, a handful of thick envelopes in his hand.

“Jake,” he greeted the young operator quietly. 

“Hey, Josiah,” Jake replied. “I… I heard about Nicholas.”

Josiah winced. “Reckon most people have by now.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Jensen asked into the sudden silence.

Josiah nodded, putting the envelopes on the counter before him. “Make sure these get out in the mail, next time one makes it through.” He took a pencil and the telegraph pad and wrote a terse message: NC SUICIDE. INFORMATION EN ROUTE. PLEASE SEND SAME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

“And send that to the usual people.”

Jake took the message and read it over before turning to his telegraph. “Line to California is a mess,” he warned as he tapped the message out. “Ain’t sure when it might get there.”

“Too bad you can’t just build a direct line, like you’re doing with everyone else,” Josiah teased.

Jake didn’t twitch. “It’s a couple of ranches. And that waystop you’re building.” He looked up and smiled. “Or, the one you’re trying to build, anyway.”

“Touche,” Josiah replied, glad of a chance to share a joke. Any joke. “I’ll see you later, Jake.”

“Take care of him, Josiah,” Jake replied. “It’s hard to fight the good fight when even the people you’re saving don’t want you saving them.”

Josiah opened the door and walked out into the daylight.

“Ain’t that the God’s honest truth,” he said quietly.

He was just hoping that Nathan wasn’t counting himself one of those—especially not when he found out Josiah had mailed out those sketches and letters to the consortium without asking.

God willing, something would bear the right fruit.

Josiah was right tired of losing.

*******   
the end


End file.
